Saturday, May 18, 2013

'Star Wars' Infomercials Advertise to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Neha-prakash By Neha Prakash2013-05-06 17:15:46 UTC

We know what you're thinking — Jedi Warriors and Ewoks don't have time to watch QVC and order Ginsu Steak Knives and Snuggies. But you're wrong. Even Sith Lords can benefit from an infomercial or two.

YouTuber TheGamerChick imagines what advertisers would sell in the Star Wars world. Everyone in a galaxy far, far away is gearing up their credit cards for light saber bread cutters, carbonite laundry machines and lawyers for those injured in Rebel attacks.

And yes, even on the Death Star, they offer the "Call right now and we'll double your order" deal. (Or as Yoda puts it, "Double your order, we will.")

Starwars-nestingdolls2 Starwars-nestingdolls1 Chewbacca5 Darthvader3 Stormtrooper-nestingdoll R2d2 Jawa

Image courtesy of YouTube, TheGamerChick

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Virtually Ride Derby Winner Orb From Jockey's Perspective

Sam-laird By Sam Laird2013-05-06 21:44:53 UTC

Ever wonder what it's like to win the Kentucky Derby? This new video produced by the digital sports info company Trakus gives us a little taste. A virtual recreation of Orb's route in the Saturday race shows the winning horse's exact path from an over-the-shoulder perspective behind jockey Joel Rosario.

The clip was published to the Kentucky Derby's official YouTube channel on Monday and provides a very cool way to experience what many consider the most exciting two minutes in sports. It's pretty cutting edge — that is, until jockeys become outfitted with Google Glass one day.

Homepage image via Rob Carr/Getty Images

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Are You a High-Tech Sports Fan? Here's Your Dream Job

Nike-plus-runningDani-fankhauser-(1-of-1) By Dani Fankhauser2013-05-06 17:05:20 UTC

Many people recall childhood dreams of wanting to be a doctor, lawyer or even president of the United States. Not so for Ricky Engelberg, experience director of digital sport at Nike and longtime enthusiast of the brand.

"The mission of the company is bringing innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world," says Engelberg, who has been with Nike for 11 years and personally works on Nike+, Nike+ Fuelband and Nike+ Running initiatives. "There are infinite possibilities here." He's gotten to work with some of the world's leading tech companies to create products and services for digitally-minded athletes and notes that a big part of the job is to "suspend disbelief to focus on what a few years from now can look like," a sentiment to which most startups can relate.

How does Nike keep up?

"Every few years it feels like the company reinvents itself," says Engelberg. "Every day feels like a different adventure."

Is working for Nike your dream job? Find out more about opportunities at Nike here.

Tell me about your role at Nike. What is it you do?

I'm an experience director for digital sport at Nike. Digital sport is synonymous with Nike+, Nike+ Fuelbands and Nike+ Running. Digital sport are products and services that motivate athletes to do more. I've been at Nike a little over 11 years and have worked in different digital capacities and have watched this evolution of digital to where we're creating all these amazing products and services, like the Nike+ running app that are seamless parts of athletes' lives, every single time they move or run or whatever the case may be.

My particular role as experience director is to oversee the end experience. In a lot of cases, I'm asking a lot of questions — why are we doing things, how are we doing them, who are they for, what are we actually going to go and do for it, and then at the nuts and bolts level, there's the design of the apps like the FuelBand app or the running app, and I work closely with our industrial design team on overall product design.

How did you land the position?

I was an intern at Nike twice, interning in basketball sports marketing, actually focused on how to use digital to connect with coaches and teams and athletes in different ways. So that was an incredibly fun internship, and then I just maintained helping out on a few things while I was still finishing up school. After I graduated I got the call one day that there was a pretty interesting position available to work on NikeBasketball.com. I came out [to the Portland area from Georgia] and talked to them, and a couple of weeks later they said they'd actually like to create a slightly different position for me, where I'd focus on digital innovation.

That was 2002, and to really focus on things like where we were going from a gaming standpoint, a music standpoint, instant messaging — at the time, that was taking off, and online media was just in nascent stages, so really I was tasked with super fun opportunities to help shape what digital could be at Nike. Eventually digital kind of migrated from being a function to being the electricity that flows through the whole company.

Nike's a huge brand and has been around for a while — before working for Nike, what was your impression of the brand? What was your first exposure to Nike?

Nike's been a part of my life since remembering anything. I'm a nerd for a lot of things, this is one of the largest things — I grew up playing baseball and football, I've got Griffey '96 posters still, I've got a Lil Penny doll from when I was 16 years old, it's in my office at work. For me it's never been a scenario where anyone had to convince me of anything related to Nike — it's been engrained in my life since I can recall things.

When I was working with people who were straight out of school for some jobs that had pretty significant creative judgment responsibility, I felt incredibly comfortable having these people right out of school make these calls because they'd loved Nike for 10 to 12 years, they knew their favorite ads, they remembered their favorite websites from us. There was this idea that they had years of Nike experience ... they grew up with the brand, and it inspired them growing up. I think there's a lot of people here that fit into that camp — they ran in Nike in high school, wore Nike cleats or loved the Fab Five and wore black socks and black shoes because of them.

SEE ALSO: The Tiny, Powerful Brain Inside Nike's FuelBand

Why is this a dream job?

There are infinite possibilities here — the mission of the company is bringing innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world, and there's an asterisk on "athlete" with a quote from one of the co-founders of the company, Bill Bowerman: "If you have a body, you're an athlete."

When you really take that to heart, it's really exciting. When I'm working on things like Nike Basketball, it's a completely different consumer problem you're trying to solve. You want to make basketball players' lives better, and when you're working on Nike+ Running, that might be creating things like "Cheer Me On." We get to collaborate with some of the most amazing companies in the world, from Apple to Facebook to Twitter to Path to Foursquare, we get to work with all these unbelievable companies in ways that people are excited about. We think about how we can motivate people to be more active, how we can make athletes' lives better. So for us, every day feels like a different adventure, and every few years it feels like the company reinvents itself, but still with the same core purpose — "innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world" — so there are never-ending opportunities here.

What makes someone a good candidate for Nike?

The unique skills and talents required are the ability to imagine how pieces come together and suspend disbelief to focus on what a few years from now can look like. Technology is on our side, it's always going to get smaller, it's always going to get more accessible. So if you let impossibilities of today get in the way of what tomorrow can be, then it's inevitable that tomorrow's not going to be amazing.

The first time we showed the FuelBand to our COO and our partners, it was a sketch that was 24 or 48 hours old and the response was, "That's awesome! Can we have it in six months? Nine months?" The company is willing to take major risks if you're willing to dream big.

Nike likes to make technology become invisible and really focus on how it's going to benefit consumers and fit seamlessly into an athlete's life.

Nike likes to make technology become invisible and really focus on how it's going to benefit consumers and fit seamlessly into an athlete's life. As we're bringing people in, we're constantly looking for people with a unique ability to make these incredibly complex things disappear and just focus on the actual value that exists for people. I think that's somewhat unique to Nike.

There's so much technology packed into the FuelBand, but really for a consumer, it's a button — it's a wristband that you wear that you know is water resistant, you can wear all day, has a week-long battery life and tracks how much you move. There's one simple button to operate it, and it sends your data to the iPhone. We could go into all the amazing [capabilities], but for us, getting it to be as simple as can be was 18 months of stripping away things.

Image courtesy of Flickr, puuikibeach

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'SNL' Mocks How Google Glass Can Be Used 'Discreetly'

Vignesh By Vignesh Ramachandran2013-05-05 15:13:24 UTC

There has been a lot of chatter about how Google Glass will allow us to do things more discreetly. For example, the new gadget lets you take a photo with a slow wink or tweet with your eyes.

But during Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" skit on Saturday, tech correspondent "Randall Meeks" (played by Fred Armisen) showed just how "discreetly" a Google Glass user can send commands to the high-tech eyewear, while holding a regular conversation with anchor Seth Meyers.

"I used to spend so much time of my life looking down at my phone, and now, thanks to Google Glass, the phone is up here and I can use it without being rude or distracting," Meeks said, with a hint of sarcasm.

Meeks then proceeded to demonstrate how "easily" he can command Glass to connect to Wi-Fi and find Italian food. But he managed to have a mishap with...er...watching some adult material. Watch the entire Google Glass parody sketch above.

Homepage thumbnail image courtesy of NBC/Saturday Night Live.

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YouTube Launching Paid Subscriptions to Some Video Channels: Report

Youtube-logoAnita-li-53bfb9a9b2 By Anita Li2013-05-06 02:25:19 UTC

YouTube is set to launch a paid subscription model for its specialist video channels as early as this week, according to a report.

The move, which has been in development for months, aims to help channels finance a wider range of content such as television shows and films, and will serve as another source of revenue, according to the Financial Times.

The service will include up to 50 YouTube channels, and subscriptions to each channel will start as low a $1.99 per month, the newspaper reported Sunday, citing anonymous sources.

In response to the report, a YouTube spokesperson told Mashable, "We have nothing to announce at this time, but we're looking into creating a subscription platform that could bring even more great content to YouTube for our users to enjoy and provide our creators with another vehicle to generate revenue from their content, beyond the rental and ad-supported models we offer."

Rumors that YouTube will monetize its premium content have circulated for some time. In January, AdAge reported that the site asked a small group of channels to apply to be among those paid.

At the time, a YouTube representative told Mashable, "We have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models ... The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform. There are a lot of our content creators that think they would benefit from subscriptions, so we’re looking at that."

Other signs suggest that YouTube is likely working on à la carte and pay-per-view options for its video channels. Code found in a February app update mentioned subscribing and unsubscribing from paid YouTube channels.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Rego - d4u.hu

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TweetDeck Ends Support for Facebook Tuesday

Tweetdeck-facebookMe-yay By Pete Pachal2013-05-06 16:12:47 UTC

If you use TweetDeck as a dashboard for your Facebook activity, that will end Tuesday. On May 7, as promised, TweetDeck will discontinue support for Facebook feeds.

The removal of Facebook support has been planned for some time. In early March, the service publicly said it would stop supporting Facebook at the same time it abandoned its mobile apps, turning exclusively to web- and desktop-based apps. Then in late April, it gave a date: May 7.

Starting Tuesday, TweetDeck users who don't remove their Facebook columns from their dashboards will have those columns removed for them. At the same time, TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone will all disappear from their respective app stores.

TweetDeck's transition from a social network aggregation tool to a service exclusively for Twitter power users is a consequence of Twitter acquiring the company in early 2011. Since then TweetDeck has shifted its focus to its web experience, desktop apps and browser extensions, leaving aggregation to other services such as HootSuite.

While it's been known for a while that TweetDeck would scrap Facebook support, the news is catching some users by surprise, judging by discussion on Twitter:

Are you bummed that TweetDeck is sunsetting Facebook support? Share your reaction in the comments.

1.%2520hootsuite 2.%2520echofon 3.%2520seesmic%2520pro 4.%2520tweetcaster 5.%2520sprout%2520social 6.%2520ubersocial 7.%2520twitterific 8.%2520plume 9.%2520tweetbot

Image: Mashable composite, images courtesy Twitter and Facebook

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Is This Publix Mother's Day Ad Pro Life?

Todd-wasserman By Todd Wasserman2013-05-06 18:03:37 UTC

A pregnant mom and her daughter prepare a meal in this sweet Mother's Day ad for supermarket Publix which some conservatives are championing as a pro-life statement.

In the ad, the mom feels her baby kicking and asks her daughter to feel her belly. The mom then asks if the daughter wants to talk to the unborn child and "tell her what a great sister you'll be." After some hesitation, the girl says, "You're really going to love Mom."

The ad, which launched in 2012, makes no reference to unborn children and merely says, "Happy Mother's Day." Yet it has become a cause celebre on Twitter among conservative bloggers. Most notably, Michelle Malkin, who tweeted:


Twitchy Team, which has 90,000 followers, is described as, "Michelle Malkin's human-powered Twitter aggregator."

Right-leaning blogs like Newsbusters have also cited the ad as "pro-life." However, so far Publix's Facebook followers haven't picked up on a possible pro-life message but merely seem to see the ad as a poignant tribute to moms.

A Publix rep says the ad isn't meant to convey a double meaning: "The commercial is meant to celebrate moms across our operating areas and to celebrate life’s most memorable occasions with Publix and food. The commercial was not intended to send any type of subliminal messaging."

Image courtesy of Publix, YouTube

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Happy 10th Birthday, LinkedIn!

Linkedin-stockSeth-fiegerman By Seth Fiegerman2013-05-06 16:52:05 UTC

Back on May 5, 2003, Reed Hoffman launched LinkedIn in his living room and asked several hundred of his friends and colleagues to join. Ten years later, the social network for professionals has more than 200 million users, 3,700 employees and 26 offices around the world.

Looking back, it almost seems inevitable that LinkedIn would become a huge hit, but it took awhile before the network really started to take off. On some days, as few as 20 people signed up to use the service.

"At the end of our first month, we had 4,500 members in the network," Hoffman wrote in a post Sunday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of launching LinkedIn. "10 years later, we’re honored and humbled that so many of you have made LinkedIn a part of your daily professional lives."

It's an accomplishment for a startup in any industry to survive for a decade, but it's particularly impressive for Internet companies to enjoy that kind of longevity. LinkedIn was founded in the aftermath of the Dot-Com bust, at a time when the biggest social networks were Friendster and MySpace.

LinkedIn launched before most of the social networks that are considered big players today. It's about a year older than Facebook, three years older than Twitter and eight years older than Google+ — though it's younger than Google itself, which launched in 1998.

Unlike some of its competitors, LinkedIn's team focused early on creating a business model. In 2005, two years after launching, LinkedIn introduced job listings and tiered subscriptions to generate revenue. Now, LinkedIn is generating more than $300 million in revenue each quarter.

To celebrate its first decade as a company, LinkedIn put out a collection of pictures showing how the website has evolved over the years from a relatively static page with some basic information about your professional connections to a dynamic social network for businesses and individuals alike.

Thumbnail image via Getty/Stan Honda

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